☁️ Cloud Services Comparison Guide
Quick reference for Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform service equivalents.
This guide provides a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of cloud services across the major cloud providers: Microsoft Azure , Amazon Web Services (AWS) , and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) .
Use this guide to:
Understand equivalent services across cloud providers
Migrate workloads from one cloud to another
Plan multi-cloud architectures
Compare features and capabilities
Make informed technology decisions
Capability
Microsoft Azure
Amazon Web Services
Google Cloud Platform
Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
Compute Engine
VM Scale Sets / Auto Scaling
Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)
Auto Scaling Groups
Managed Instance Groups
Dedicated Hosts
Azure Dedicated Host
EC2 Dedicated Hosts
Sole-Tenant Nodes
Spot / Preemptible VMs
Spot VMs
EC2 Spot Instances
Preemptible VMs
Bare Metal
Azure BareMetal Infrastructure
AWS Bare Metal Instances
Bare Metal Solution
Custom Images
Managed Images / Shared Image Gallery
AMIs
Custom Images
GPU Instances
GPU-enabled VMs
GPU EC2 Instances
GPU VMs
📦 Containers & Kubernetes
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Managed Kubernetes
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Amazon EKS
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Serverless Containers
Azure Container Apps
AWS App Runner / Fargate
Cloud Run
Container Registry
Azure Container Registry (ACR)
Amazon ECR
Artifact Registry
Managed Docker Hosting
App Service (Containers)
Elastic Beanstalk
App Engine (Flex)
Service Mesh
Open Service Mesh / Istio
App Mesh
Anthos Service Mesh
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Object Storage
Blob Storage
S3
Cloud Storage
File Storage
Azure Files
EFS
Filestore
Block Storage
Managed Disks
EBS
Persistent Disk
Archive Storage
Blob Archive Tier
S3 Glacier
Archive Storage
Data Transfer
Azure Data Box
Snowball
Transfer Appliance
Storage Lifecycle Mgmt
Blob Lifecycle Rules
S3 Lifecycle Policies
Object Lifecycle Mgmt
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Managed SQL (General)
Azure SQL Database
RDS
Cloud SQL
MySQL
Azure Database for MySQL
RDS MySQL / Aurora
Cloud SQL MySQL
PostgreSQL
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
RDS PostgreSQL / Aurora
Cloud SQL PostgreSQL
SQL Server
Azure SQL / SQL MI
RDS SQL Server
Cloud SQL SQL Server
Enterprise Distributed SQL
Azure SQL Hyperscale
Aurora
Spanner
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Key-Value / Document
Cosmos DB
DynamoDB
Firestore
Wide-Column
Cosmos DB (Cassandra API)
Keyspaces
Bigtable
Cache (Redis)
Azure Cache for Redis
ElastiCache
Memorystore
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Virtual Network
Virtual Network (VNet)
VPC
VPC
Subnets
Subnets
Subnets
Subnets
Load Balancer (L4)
Azure Load Balancer
Network Load Balancer
TCP/UDP Load Balancer
Application LB (L7)
Application Gateway
Application Load Balancer
HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Global Traffic Mgmt
Traffic Manager
Route 53
Cloud DNS + Global LB
Private Connectivity
Private Endpoint
PrivateLink
Private Service Connect
NAT Gateway
NAT Gateway
NAT Gateway
Cloud NAT
DDoS Protection
Azure DDoS Protection
AWS Shield
Cloud Armor
🔐 Identity, Security & Governance
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
IAM
Entra ID (Azure AD) + RBAC
IAM
Cloud IAM
Identity Federation
Entra ID
IAM Identity Center
Workforce Identity
Secrets Mgmt
Key Vault
Secrets Manager
Secret Manager
HSM
Azure Managed HSM
CloudHSM
Cloud HSM
Policy Enforcement
Azure Policy
AWS Config + SCP
Organization Policy
Compliance Blueprints
Azure Blueprints
Control Tower
Assured Workloads
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
CI/CD
Azure DevOps
CodePipeline
Cloud Build
Infrastructure as Code
ARM / Bicep / Terraform
CloudFormation / Terraform
Deployment Manager / Terraform
Artifact Repo
Azure Artifacts
CodeArtifact
Artifact Registry
Automation
Azure Automation
Systems Manager
Cloud Scheduler
Serverless Functions
Azure Functions
Lambda
Cloud Functions
📊 Monitoring, Logging & Observability
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Metrics & Logs
Azure Monitor
CloudWatch
Cloud Monitoring
Log Analytics
Log Analytics Workspace
CloudWatch Logs
Log Explorer
Tracing
Application Insights
X-Ray
Cloud Trace
Alerts
Azure Alerts
CloudWatch Alarms
Alerting
Cost Mgmt
Cost Management
Cost Explorer
Billing Reports
📩 Messaging & Integration
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Message Queue
Storage Queues / Service Bus
SQS
Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub
Event Grid
SNS
Pub/Sub
Event Streaming
Event Hubs
Kinesis
Pub/Sub
Workflow Orchestration
Logic Apps
Step Functions
Workflows
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
Data Warehouse
Synapse Analytics
Redshift
BigQuery
ETL / ELT
Data Factory
Glue
Dataflow
Data Lake
Data Lake Storage Gen2
Lake Formation
Cloud Storage
Stream Analytics
Stream Analytics
Kinesis Analytics
Dataflow Streaming
Capability
Azure
AWS
GCP
ML Platform
Azure Machine Learning
SageMaker
Vertex AI
Cognitive APIs
Azure AI Services
AI Services
Cloud AI APIs
LLM / GenAI
Azure OpenAI
Bedrock
Gemini
Speech / Vision
Speech Services / Vision
Rekognition / Polly
Vision / Speech APIs
🌐 Application Platform / PaaS (Web Apps & APIs) When Choosing a Cloud Provider Azure Strengths:
Best for Microsoft ecosystem (Office 365, Dynamics, SQL Server)
Strong hybrid cloud support (Azure Stack, Arc)
Excellent for enterprise customers with existing Microsoft agreements
Great DevOps integration (GitHub, Azure DevOps)
Strong compliance certifications (FedRAMP, etc.)
AWS Strengths:
Largest market share and most mature services
Broadest range of services and features
Most third-party integrations and marketplace
Strong in data and analytics
Best for startups and scale-ups
GCP Strengths:
Best for data analytics and BigQuery
Strong in AI/ML and machine learning
Most innovative in emerging technologies
Best Kubernetes support (created by Google)
Good pricing for compute and storage
All three providers offer:
On-demand: Pay-as-you-go hourly pricingDiscounts: Committed use discounts (1-3 years)Spot/Preemptible: Up to 90% discount for interruptible workloadsFree tiers: Credits and always-free services
Pricing varies by region and service. Use pricing calculators to estimate costs.
Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Strategies
Azure: Azure Stack (on-premises), Azure Arc (any infrastructure)AWS: AWS Outposts (on-premises), AWS Local ZonesGCP: Anthos (on-premises), Google Distributed Cloud
All three providers support multi-cloud and hybrid architectures with proper planning and tools.
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